A Siren's Song (Ride of the Darkyrie 2) (2 page)

             
“We aren’t the same species,” he hissed, but made no move to get off of me.

             
The new power inside of me screamed for him. It tasted his blood and it wanted more. Yes, he hated me. Wanted me dead, but his body responded to my words. This was his weakness. His dark thing. He felt guilty for his want, was disgusted by it, but it didn’t change the fact he wanted me.

             
“Yes, we are.” I was suddenly reminded of my conversation with Jason at the Policeman’s Ball. Cold daggers shot through my spine and for one horrible moment, I thought that must be what guilt felt like. But guilt implied misdeed. I had done nothing wrong.

             
“Even without your memories, you’re still Helreggin to the core.” He said as he released me, all the rage gone from him.

             
“How is that?”

             
“Your lover. Baldur. He should hate you for what you did to him, but instead, he worships at your feet like a dog. That’s what you get off on. Walking the edge with someone who wants you dead. Turning them, destroying everything they stand for, their honor.” The words were so obviously sour on his tongue, his ruined mouth twisted with his disgust.

             
Baldur was the Norse God of Beauty and Light, and some say of warriors too. Only the Norse would combine such things, would see the beauty in war. He’d been murdered by mistletoe, all by Loki’s master plan. After his death, he’d been bound to Hel until Raganorak. Helreggin would have been his jailer and his enemy.

             
“I have no lover, siren.”

             
“Don’t you? He follows you everywhere, guards you like some precious jewel—until tonight.”

             
Was he talking about Jason? Was Jason a god?

             
“How is it you know nothing?” Incredulity stained his tone.

             
“It is a little fucked up that the only one I can get any answers from is the assassin who wants me dead.” I glanced at my arm where I’d sliced myself open. There wasn’t even a scar.

             
“There is a book. Your lover has it somewhere in his collection. A lost Edda about the Hel Cycle. Read it.” He turned to leave and rather than walk out the door, he was absorbed by the shadows.

             
I suppose I could have asked him why he was helping me, but I already knew. He wanted me to be the same Helreggin from the vision when he killed me.

             
So I had to go to Jason’s. I didn’t want to ask him for shit though, not after he’d lied to me. I’d tell him I wanted to talk about the case.

             
I picked up my cell and dialed him.

             
“Grimes,” he answered.

             
“You find anything?” I tried not to think about what had happened with the Cross and that strange, sharp feeling in my spine.

             
“Yeah, I did. The woman who works the sex shop across the street thinks she saw our guy.”

             
“What about you? Did you get anything from the maid?” Jason asked.

             
“Yeah. Our vics’ names—“

             
“Why don’t you just come over?” He sounded so tired. 

             
“I’ll be there in fifteen.”

             
“Bring coffee.”

             
“If I have to get the coffee, you better have some donuts.”

             
“Better than that. I have cupcakes with Nutella frosting.”

             
He was trying hard to make me forget what had happened. As if some piece of cake would soothe my hurts away. If he wanted to think that, fine with me. It would be easier to work with him if he wasn’t constantly up my ass about forgiving him.

             
I did need to let go of it anyway. I’d promised myself I’d shut off the emotions connected to him, those feelings of comfort and safety. I didn’t need them. I wasn’t human. So I shouldn’t be angry or hurt by how he’d lied to me. I should be indifferent.

             
And remember to keep him at a distance and never flip that fucking switch back on again. I’d learned my lesson before. Loving Thora. Wanting to be a mother, having human feelings. Nothing could ever hurt like that had, so Jason’s betrayal shouldn’t have even scratched my armor. But if I was honest with myself, it hadn’t just scratched the armor, it had pierced it right through. It shouldn’t have hurt me, I had my own secrets, after all.

             
After I gathered up my files, and left a note for the cleaning crew about the spilled “ink” on the carpet under my desk, I left the precinct and drove to Jason’s apartment.

             
He lived on the Country Club Plaza—an upscale neighborhood in the middle of everything. I always liked his apartment and the amenities. Jason didn’t actually need me to pick up coffee; the complex had a valet service that would provide him with anything he wanted.

             
But this was our routine when we worked a case. We spent hours poring over files, doing research; we were rarely at the precinct. Jason could access the database from his laptop and we got results, so Stratovich never gave us grief about it.

             
He opened the door before I could knock. The first thing I noticed was that he was barefooted and the second thing was that he was wearing sweats. Gods didn’t wear sweatpants. Did they?

             
Jason smiled and it struck me that he was as beautiful as the Cross was ugly. I found both extremes attractive. How had I never noticed how strong Jason was, too? There was as much restrained power coiled in him as the Cross. If he chose, he could have put me on my ass at any time. How had I convinced myself I was stronger? Because he’d let me?

             
That pissed me off, too.

             
I should have gone to the bar before coming to Jason’s and picked up some guy I’d never have to look at again to get this need out of my system. My body was obviously going through something I didn’t comprehend. I wondered if all strong men would make me feel this way or if it was just the Cross and Jason?

             
Either answer was awful because they both took away my control.

             
“Are you going to stand there or come inside?” The corner of his mouth turned up in the beginnings of a smile.

             
“I’d come inside if you’d get the hell out of the way.” I couldn’t help but return his smile.

             
Jason stepped to the side and as soon I’d sat down, he shoved a book at me. “Happy Birthday.”

             
It was the Hel Cycle the assassin told me about.

             
I refused to feel like an asshole because he’d just given me the book I’d come over to steal. “Thank you.” I traced my fingers over the elegant gold filigree lettering and the ridges and valleys where the leather had been tooled by ancient hands. “It’s lovely and exactly what I wanted.”

             
“Was it?” The corner of his mouth turned up in a beginning of a smirk.

             
“Actually, it was.” I bit into one of the cupcakes, the rich Nutella frosting melting on my tongue like a decadent snowflake. I was tempted to lick all the frosting and just leave the cake part. I didn’t want to face immortality with a dumpy ass.

             
“Oh yeah? Did your father tell you about it in his last letter?”

             
I paused mid-lick. I’d seen the Cross since Grimes had shot him with the ash bullet. If he was still just Jason Grimes, I would have already told him everything. But he wasn’t. He was a stranger. 

             
He’d lied to me.

             
The Cross had never lied to me.

             
I wondered again if I was insane because I put my faith in the one who was sent to kill me rather than my partner who I was supposed to trust with my life.

             
But the Cross was more like me than Grimes would ever be, even if he was a god. The Cross was a killer, just like me, and Jason, he was… I tried to imagine telling him what happened to some of the perps in cases we’d worked. How with the Liberty Monument Strangler I’d managed to get him to meet me on one of those river cruises and I’d lured him to the engine room with promises of a young boy I’d procured for him. Then I bashed his head into the gears until he’d had no face and dumped his body in the river. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t envision Grimes’ reaction.

             
I popped the rest of the cupcake in my mouth with a nod.  As if that could fill the hole inside me, warm up that place where I kept all of my father’s words to me. I still had that letter to read and that gave me a bit of solace.

             
I guess for all the lying I have to do, all of the masks I wear, it’s strange that I’d put such stock in things like trust, loyalty, honesty. After all, it wasn’t as if I’d told Jason everything about myself either.

             
That didn’t matter to me though. I had higher expectations of him than I did of myself.

             
“What else did he say, Brynn?” His eyes were bright.

             
“I thought we were talking about the case?” My phone rang as I spoke and I answered, “Hill.”

             
“Get back to the Capri,” Captain Stratovich ordered. “The night shift found another pair of bodies.”

CHAPTER TWO

             
This killer surprised me.

             
Usually with a case like this it would be weeks or months before we saw another murder. Any other profiler would say he’d escalated and subconsciously, he wanted to be caught. Why else would he dump the bodies in the same place after the first pair had been discovered? Serials were ritualistic, but normally would move their dumping ground when discovered.

             
“This one is weird, Hill. Really fucking weird,” Grimes muttered as we climbed the stairs to the second floor of the Capri. 

             
Weird? After all of the shit in the last forty-eight hours and he thought
this
was weird? Tracking a killer and trying to solve the murders were the most normal things out of the lot.

             
Once inside the room, the layout was almost identical to the previous scene. Right down to the way the flowers in their hair bound the bodies together and the cadavers were in the same condition—emaciated, appearing to have been dead for centuries.

             
All but for the faint glow of a tattoo on one woman’s wrist.

             
Three small dots like a pyramid.

             
She was MS-13.

             
The other female was Caucasian with no gang affiliation.

             
Fuck.

             
The only things that tied the two scenes together were the condition and placement of the bodies and two of the victims were MS-13.

             
“Do you see that?” Grimes asked as we neared the bodies, pointing right at the tattoos. The dots would have been almost imperceptible to the human eye, but Grimes saw them. “Did you see that on one of the other vics?”

             
Realization struck fast and hard. I knew the woman with the tattoo. “That’s Sarita. She’s the maid I talked to this morning.”

             
“Are you sure?”

             
“Am I ever
not
sure, Grimes?”

             
“You didn’t answer my question.” The expression on his face was one of blatant superiority. He already knew the answer to the question before he’d asked it.

             
“I didn’t put it in the report,” I muttered under my breath.

             
“Why not?”

             
“Because I know this isn’t gang-related and if the Captain sees two vics were gang members, he’ll kick it up to the gang task force to get it out of our department and these women will never have justice. I
know
this isn’t a gang thing, Grimes. In my gut.”

             
“I trust your gut the same as I’d trust my own, Brynn. But you don’t have all of the information,” he whispered in my ear.

             
Goddamn it. Really? How many more bombs was he going to drop on me in a week? What was it going to be this time? Leprechauns? A plague from some virus found only in four-eyed unicorn shit?